Polybius; fact or fiction?

[GanjaKat]

Hey people,
I recently came across an article called "Video game myth: Fact or Fiction"
Its just an article discussing some of the "Urban legends" of the game world such as the Atari 10m landfill and Sadams purchase of 4 thousand ps2's to make a super computer to launch missiles as other such rumors.
Well it boiled down to #1 being the story of "Polybius"

for those of you who don't know the story
Polybius is supposedly an arcade machine that was released in 1981/1982 into a few small back ally arcades in Portland, Oregon. The game was said to be very addictive and the players had a whole array of problems including:
Memory loss
Sickness
badass nightmares
(apparently the nightmares where horrible, people woke up crying and screaming)
and some other problems to.

To add to the story one man who supposedly ran one of the arcades at the time said from time to time, "men in black" would turn up and check/take records from the machines but not the money. After about a year the games where drawn back and have never been seen/heard of since.

for every person who believes this is a hoax there is another person who believes it is a real story. I myself like to believe in this story, i mean yes the government are fucked up and would probably pull a stunt like this to pull people away from video games. This was during the early days of video gaming still remember. the people who do believe this, think the company called Sinneslöschen which translates into "Sence-delete" which is exactly what it was supposedly done was some sort of government/FBI/CIA off shoot working on ways to play in mind control through games/TV ect.

What do you think ?

Here is the wiki page about Polybius -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_%28game%29

Here is the myth page i read when i found out about it, if you would like to see it and the others -
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/video-game-myths-fact-or-fiction-/1182040

The site Coin-op has the most info on this game i can find in one place. here is a link
http://www.coinop.org/g.aspx/103223/Polybius.html
Many people that don't believe in this story think that this is the site that started the hoax

Either way its an interesting story...ryt

 

[CassinoChips]

As with anything of this nature, provide me with some hard evidence, and I'll believe it.

Moreover, this is actually just a re-spin of an urban legend where men in black supposedly went around to video games and recorded the high scores and who earned the scores.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/roundup.asp <--- Scroll down.

It's amazing how quick the human mind will jump to sinister conclusions, jumping at shadows, seeing conspiracies around every corner. It's an interesting, fully exploitable phenomenon.

 

[GanjaKat]

Yeah, but unless someone can give me hard evidence this DID NOT happen is the same.. and part of the military taking records shiz is true, they do use high scores on games such as battle field to recruit

 

[Gingerbread Lesbian]

The only problem with myth arguments is that you have to prove it did happen before you can argue against it, otherwise the whole myth falls apart as nothing more than a myth.

As for me, I personally don't believe it, I think the government have something better to do than check arcade games, I've played several scary games and it hasn't once affected me, so I think the chance of an arcade games from the 1980s scaring people, is somewhat slim.

 

[GanjaKat]

it was the fact, not it was scary, but that it messed with them. i don't think the nightmares where coz the game where scary, but, it could be attributed to things like random light/sound patterns. The game Tempest had similar problems on beta machines where as the "Claw" stayed still and the levels moved around you, resulting in motion sickness at the least. but its EASY to implement sounds and flashes into arcade games for specific reasons. Darren Brown once did it for his show.. he put in periodic flashes and so the player blacked out and forgot he was playing it, but then they moved him and he woke up "In the game" (they moved his to a building with people designed to look like the exact building he was in, while playing the house of the dead 2 game xD, they even gave him a gun with only red paintballs lol)

 

[blakstang98]

Well, I'm not going to argue whether it's fact or fiction, but I'll give my outtakes on it. I'll say first off that I think this is a really interesting story regardless. The fact that a video game was being rigged to get information, or it was a secret military op, or it was a primitive form of terrorism (a German name for the company during the Cold War and such).

In 1981, video games were still a new idea, so it's natural that kids would play it in an arcade and basically get "addicted" to it (hell I still get addicted to games). Especially given the fact that a hypnotic effect could be created from it isn't out of the realm of possibility either. I've played games in time where fatigue would almost give you a dizzying effect because of the layout of a map or being totally focused on 1 part that was immobile and the surroundings were moving.

But one thing that makes me think it really could be a conspiracy is that the information about this game is very lacking. It doesn't mean there was something corrupt about the past of the game, but why hasn't proper information about the game been documented? I still don't understand what kind of game this is, it says puzzle, but that could really be anything when it comes down to it.

Bottom line, due to our lack of information, it's hard to say if it's fact or fiction either way. Considering I've been playing video games since Intellivision when I was like 3 or something, it's pretty scary to imagine. I wonder if there were any other games that had these same effects? It's scary to think that if this is true, I could have been a victim of some nasty effects of early games/game systems. But either way, I have no opinion on the matter.